Jenny McCarthy Vids from Playboy to Hollywood

Updated on April 27, 2013

Jenny McCarthy is an American actress and former Playboy model who has become well known for her charisma, snappy banter, and amusing facial expressions.

She first appeared in the magazine Playboy in October 1993 and was named Playmate of the Year in its June 1994 issue. She later began a career in television and film and has recently started writing books.

Jenny McCarthy was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a middle-class Irish American Catholic family that lived in Southwest Chicago in the West Elsdon neighborhood. She is the second of four daughters; her sisters are named Joanne, Amy and Lynette. Her mother, Linda, was a housewife, and her father, Dan McCarthy, was a steel mill foreman. She attended St. Turibius Grade School on Chicago's South Side. As a teenager, McCarthy attended Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School (whose school sweater she donned in the pages of Playboy) and was cheerleader at both Brother Rice High School and St. Laurence High Schools, although she has referred to herself as an "outcast" at her school. After graduating from high school, she attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale to study nursing.

In 1992, Jenny was scrambling for money to pay for her second year of nursing studies. She made a decision to quit school and pursue her modeling career, but this led to disappointment because people were telling her she was too curvy. Living in Chicago, she decided to personally deliver her pictures to the Playboy office.

The editors agreed to pay Jenny $20,000 to pose as Miss October 1993. In the months following her contract, Jenny won the Playmate of the Year title and $100,000 in cash and prizes. She left her hometown of Chicago in search of stardom, and landed in Los Angeles.

At the Premiere of Scary Movie 3

Modeling and Acting Career

For a time, Jenny hosted Hot Rocks, a Playboy TV show featuring uncensored music videos. Then in 1995, MTV chose her to be the host of a new dating show called Singled Out, for which she left Hot Rocks. She received permission to reformat the show to the format that best suited her talents. She became a full-fledged VJ getting paid an impressive $500,000 for the year. Jenny decided to leave Singled Out and focus her efforts on creating a new MTV sketch-variety series, The Jenny McCarthy Show. Her description of the show was, "Kind of like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous on Acid." She developed a sitcom for NBC, in which she became the assistant of a Hollywood movie star, helping him with his mansion.

Play.boy detected this success; they now wanted to further their relationship with McCarthy. They offered her $500,000 for more of her nude pictures. She declined the offer, saying it wasn't the path she wanted to take. Play.boy settled for re-run pictures of her for upcoming issues.

Although she also declined proposals from Fox and the WB, McCarthy was nonetheless expanding beyond teen-oriented cable channels and gentlemen's magazines. She accepted the role of a blonde nurse in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995) and later, portrayed her first substantial screen character as a neurotic movie star in The Stupids (1996), opposite Tom Arnold.

Also in 1997, she appeared on one of two covers for the September issue of Playboy, the other cover had Pamela Anderson on the front. McCarthy also released an autobiography: Jen-X. McCarthy once modeled for Candies, a shoe company. In one advertisement, McCarthy posed naked wearing only shoes and having her panties off while sitting on a toilet seat. This stirred a controversy.

In 1998, McCarthy starred in BASEketball. In 1999, she starred in Diamonds, a movie which was directed by her husband John Mallory Asher. The next year, she appeared in the popular horror movie Scream 3. Since 2001, McCarthy has guest-starred in many shows as Stacked, Charmed, The Drew Carey Show, Fastlane and Just Shoot Me!.

In 2003, Jenny McCarthy appeared in Scary Movie 3 along with model and actress Pamela Anderson. In 2005, McCarthy produced, wrote and starred in Dirty Love along with Carmen Electra. The same year, she hosted a new show on E! called Party at the Palms. The reality show, which is filmed at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, features hotel guests, party goers and celebrities acting outrageously with McCarthy. In March 2006, she was given Razzie Awards for "Worst Actress," "Worst Screenplay," and "Worst Picture" for her work on Dirty Love, which also netted her then-husband, John Asher, a Razzie for "Worst Director."

Sexy Jenny McCarthy

Taking Photos on Playboy Set

Jenny McCarthy Hot Pic

With husband, John Asher

Jenny with Jim Carrey

Personal Life

In 1993, McCarthy underwent breast augmentation to enhance her look as a model for Playboy. Borrowing a page from fellow Playmate Pamela Anderson's publicity playbook, McCarthy took them out in 1998.

McCarthy dated her manager Ray Manzella for a short time in 1998. After breaking up with Manzella, McCarthy began dating actor/director John Asher. The couple got engaged in January 1999, and married that year on September 11. They have a son, Evan Joseph, born on May 18, 2002. In August 2005, McCarthy and Asher filed for divorce.

In a February 2006 interview with Howard Stern, adult actress Jenna Jameson said she had two sexual encounters with McCarthy. When McCarthy visited Stern's show in April 2006, she denied having sex with Jameson, but said she "made out" with her during the two encounters. McCarthy also took a lie detector test and passed the questions regarding Jameson. During the appearance, McCarthy also admitted to having performed oral sex on women and that she cheated on her ex-husband with both men and women. However, in a later appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, she claimed they didn't cheat on each other because it was totally agreed upon.

In December 2005, McCarthy began dating actor Jim Carrey. They did not make their relationship public until June 2006.

In May 2007, McCarthy announced that her son was diagnosed with autism and would be coming out with a book on the subject shortly. Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism is due out in September of 2007.

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